Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen was a Harvard Business School professor and influential scholar of innovation and growth. His research examined why capable, well-managed incumbents can fail when technologies and business models change. The Innovator’s Dilemma made disruptive innovation a central concept in strategy, while later work extended his theory-building into growth, education, healthcare and personal purpose.

Disruption has a specific logic in Christensen’s work. Entrants begin in overlooked low-end or new-market footholds with propositions that may initially appear inferior on mainstream performance measures. As their capabilities improve, they move towards established customers. Incumbents can rationally ignore the early market because their resources, processes and values are designed to serve more profitable existing demand.

Christensen also developed ideas about jobs to be done and the resources-processes-values framework. Together they encourage leaders to understand the progress customers seek and whether an organisation is structurally capable of delivering a new model. The popularity of disruption has produced misuse: not every successful start-up, technology shift or attack on an incumbent is disruptive, and the theory is more valuable when its conditions are tested carefully.

OutcomesLab profiles Christensen because his work explains how good management can reinforce the wrong trajectory when the basis of competition changes. It connects market evolution with resource allocation and organisational capability, making it highly relevant to strategic coherence. Christensen also modelled theory as a tool for better judgement: useful not because it predicts perfectly, but because anomalies and evidence can refine how leaders interpret uncertainty.